Holiday Marketing to Moms: Is the shopping already over?

It’s Cyber Monday, which follows Black Friday, which followed the early November Black Friday deals, which followed Early Christmas offers in October. The question is how many dollars does Mom have left to spend after today?

Early reports of double digit increases in online retail and a small increase in offline retail leave retailers wondering what will happen in December when typically 40% of all shopping happens in the last two weeks before Christmas. On average, each U.S. shopper spent $365.34 this holiday weekend, up from $343.31 last year, the retail group said. Total U.S. spending this Black Friday weekend was $45 billion.

This year, Americans are expected to spend an average of $688.87 on holiday-related shopping, up from $681.83 last year.

The National Retail Federation estimated that 106.9 million Americans would buy gifts during Cyber Monday. That’s about a 10% jump from the 96.5 million Cyber Monday shoppers nationwide in 2009, the retail group said.

However, this year, the retailers started selling early, in hopes of gaining ground on competitors and getting their fair share of Mom’s shopping list. According to Wall Street Journal, Cyber Monday began on Thanksgiving Day this year and is expected to last through Cyber Thursday, or even longer as Walmart announced this was “Cyber week”.

Usually a strong Black Friday season is an indicator of a jolly holiday season. However, one of the issues this year is whether or not the great deals offered this early in the season have soaked up the largest part of those deal shoppers who where there for the insane low price offers. If that is the case, there might not be the same last minute shopping scenario we are used to seeing. Those price conscious shoppers are already reporting they are finished with their shopping.

Another question this year is how much shopping is for gifts and how much is for the shopper? Many of the great deals available over the weekend were scooped up by individuals waiting to buy a television, computer or tablet for themselves.